I don't claim that Serral is the one while recognizing that for the status there must be some minimum achievements on Korean soil accompanied due historical reasons. (back-to-back GSL vs The World can be just ignored, nil, doesn't count)

But it also seems to me that 'Bonjwa' -category is empty. Analogy would be the last two decades as its been like waiting of Jesus' next coming (while writing this already sandbacked, delayed, and move-goal-posted some 2000+ years by those who wait most eagerly, winks winks).

If in some utmostly unimaginable scenario SC2 will be played still after two millenia, all future Bonjwa canditates are likely shot down using Serral as excuse.

Whole word is just ideal state of potential in an imagination. When happening before our own eyes, we are still blinded by that ideal.

[Disclaimer: religious analogy is just for pointing out certain things about human history and psyche: next coming of J. was originally imminent - so has been the ideal of Bonjwa - always coming, never actualizing]

Someone should really break down the results of the 5 BW Bonjwas (BoxeR, NaDa, iloveoov, sAviOr, Flash) and figure out it was really fair not to award that title to anyone in SC2. MVP, Life, Maru, Serral and others have had very good results over a long time too.

I don't think there's anyone in SC2 who has had a bonjwa-esque run. In 2002 season, Nada won 3/3 MSL and 1/3 OSL (he won the OSL in 2003 but it started in 2002). That's 4 out of 6 of the most important tournaments. From November 2003 to November 2004, iloveoov won 3 MSLs in a row as well as an OSL (along with OSL semi). That's also 4 out of 6 of the Starleagues within that time period. Flash is the most impressive. He was in all 6 Starleague finals in 2010 and won 4 of them (he also won WCG). There's probably no SC2 player who had a run that was close to any of these three.

Boxer won 2 OSL, OSL final, and WCG in 2001 (there was only one MSL in 2001). So he won 2/4 Starleagues and was in 3/4 finals. Savior was in 4 MSL finals in a row (won 3 of them) and then made an OSL finals the season after his streak of MSL finals

Even Jaedong (who is not a bonjwa) in 2009 season won, 2 OSL, WCG and 1 MSL (won MSL in 2010 but season started in 2009). That's 3/6 Starleagues and a WCG. He also had around 70% winrate in 2009, which no SC2 player has accomplished (if you are talking about offline Korean winrate, which is the best comparison). Speaking of winrates, FlaSh, Jaedong and BIsu respectively had 71-72%, 67-68% and 65-66% career winrate. To my knowledge, only person in SC2 with a remotely comparable career winrate is Innovation who is around 62%. Evidently, great Brood War players were much more dominant than great SC2 players (I'm not sure why).

For comparison, I look at Maru and Serral's peaks (I think they are the highest and I don't know much about WoL so I excluded Mvp). In 2018, Maru won 4/9 of the premier tournaments (3 out of 5 among GSL, IEM WC, Blizzcon) he was in for 2018. Serral won 7/9. If you exclude WCS Circuit and HSC, he won 2/4 (1/2 among IEM WC and Blizzcon). It's hard to compare things to Brood War because they didn't have much else besides MSL and OSL, which were very prestigious. However, in SC2 there are many tournaments, some more prestigious than others.

The thing is, I think Serral and Maru both came close to Boxer and Savior's runs in 2018 but that very fact means neither can be bonjwa, as a bonjwa is supposed to have no rival near him. That is the main reason why Jaedong was not considered a bonjwa in 2009. To give an example, I think you'd have to do something ridiculous like win Blizzcon, 1-2 GSL, IEM WC to be equivalent to a Brood War bonjwa.

Note: I should've mentioned other smaller tournaments that the older bonjwas won but I decided not to because I think what I said was already enough and I know very little about the obscure tournaments.

Career winrate has nothing to with being Bonjwa(the earlier Bonjwas in Brood War had time to grow old and weaker so that their overall win ratio considerably declined); in any of case, just to name three, Byun had a 71% career winrate(only 59% offline) while Serral has 69% overall(67.5% offline) and Inno 67.5%(64%): comparable with those of the BW players you listed. Only one between Serral and Maru could theorically be bonjwa(as it was the case of Flash over Jaedong), but having two players that dominant doesn't imply that none of them could be.

To my understanding, being a Bonjwa isn't necessarily restricted to a one year run but simply to certain period of absolute domination which could be shorter or(very rarely) longer; Serral, Life, Maru, Rogue, Mvp, TaeJa all had periods of bonjwaesque domination over Sc2, of which Serral's is statistically the most dominant(if we look at his streak of his 6 Premier titles) or the most prolonged(20 months to win 10 Premier tournaments out of the 17 he participated in).

I only used career winrate to illustrate how SC2 players are generally less dominant than Brood War players. The Broodwar players I listed had years with like 70% winrate or higher (Flash had multiple years of mid 70% winrate while Jaedong had multiple years of 70% winrate). That their lifetime winrate is better than the greatest SC2 player's peak-year winrates I think shows Brood War players dominate harder than SC2 players.

The reason why Serral and Maru can't be bonjwa is because they dominated over same time period. Flash and Jaedong's peaks were almost a year apart (Jaedong in 2009, Flash in 2010) and thus had only a little overlap. Even though Serral has been playing amazingly for 20 months, I'd argue he was only undisputed best player for a couple of them whereas most bonjwas were clearly the best player throughout most of their peak..I'll admit that it's likely no other SC2 player has consistently stayed in the top for so long while winning many tournaments (Stats and Dark have been around as consistent but they don't win that many tournaments).

Ultimately, I don't think it's reasonable to impose Brood War's definition of bonjwa on SC2 because it's a lot harder to dominate in SC2. That doesn't make Serral and Maru worse than the BW greats, of course. They are obviously among the greatest SC2 players.

The victory also locked down his position as the #1 Circuit seed headed into the Global Finals—enough to give him a 'referee's decision' claim to be the king of the 2019 Circuit, even if Reynor equaled his number of Circuit titles and defeated him in two-out-of-three finals matches

That's a bit odd to call it a "referee's decision" like it's only a technical #1 win, because WCS Spring featured a semi-final clash between the two where Serral demolished Reynor 3-0. Serral would have been ahead as #1 seed if that happened in the finals too, because of superior results in every global tournament this year, and in WCS Challenger since Serral won all of those.

I'd call it a shared throne, considering that Serral hasn't lost to anyone in WCS since Winter 2018 besides Reynor, and Reynor hasn't lost to anyone besides Serral in WCS since his debut one year ago. But if you have to pick just one, Serral is the clear winner, with "only counting WCS finals" being the single unique factor he's behind in.

"The reason why Serral and Maru can't be bonjwa is because they dominated over same time period." - Anc13nt

I agree with that notion but I do not agree how that notion is used (not least in these boards are argued, nothing against your chain of argumentation particularly).

Bonjwa must dominate (doesn't imply 100% win rate, which is absurdity in frameworks of SC2) over his entire field of competition against considerably lengthy period of time (implying directly also that happens during his/hers career peak). However if it can be argued that Serral cannot be considered Bonjwa because he doesn't participate the league with all best players participating i.e. GSL, that same argument can be directly applied to GSL as a whole and all GSL players as well (they miss there Reynor, Neeb too, not only Serral).

That's symmetric. We must compare rates of extra GSL and extra Circuit dominance over the whole top SC2 scene.

How long? Against whom exactly? Must a future SC2 bonjwa dominate over whom and to what degree to be considered as such?

A random result between Maru and Serral in a random tournament cannot decide that properly in current world of SC2 environment. Maru winning Blizzcon alone wouldn't make him a bonjwa, exactly because we must use same arguments and apply them equally to all.

The problem with the Serral = Bonjwa discussion is that his domination mostly encompasses tournaments from which the rest of the best players in the world are barred. "But you can't blame Serral because koreans aren't allowed in most tournaments", no I am not blaming Serral but its not about apointing blame its about answering the question if Serral has unquestionably dominated the top level of professional starcraft 2 for a long period of time.

No one can do that while dodging most of the highest level of starcraft 2 tournaments, it just isn't possible, Serral not competing in GSL pretty much disqualifies him from the Bonjwa discussion.

On September 09 2019 18:45 Anc13nt wrote: Serral won 7/9. If you exclude WCS Circuit and HSC, he won 2/4 (1/2 among IEM WC and Blizzcon).

That is misleading, removing GSL and super tournaments just because he didn't participate in those tournaments only skew the discussion. A Bonjwa doesn't win the tournaments he competes in, he wins the biggest most competetive tournaments. I'm not saying Serrals wcs wins doesn't matter (which I've said before and changed my mind about) but when we are discussing being bonjwa or not we are entering a whole other discussion.

In 2018 Serral won 2/8 of the most prestigious tournaments and Maru won 3/8. The three remaning champions are Rogue, Stats and Classic.

I have said it before and I will say it again, looking forward to blizzcon and hoping for a protoss buff or zerg nerf coming.

Haha. Trying to point out irrelevance of whole "discussion" as the term itself have no meaning.

Instead, 'Serral' is used like an adjective or noun to describe something far above and beyond a field; "Blah blah you're like Serral", "Serralishque", "Serral-like"...

People get 'Serraled' if they got overran decisively.

These usages are starting to cover also other fields of life than just esports.

We don't need that word 'Bonjwa' anymore in practice, as several intended, and implicitly included (but seldom clarified) meanings of the word actually appear already much better in usage of variously suffixed Serral-words.

Haha this is nice, I like it.

So going full Serral is basically the opposite of going full foreigner. Or Serralish control the opposite of NA control

On September 09 2019 20:51 UnLarva wrote:"The reason why Serral and Maru can't be bonjwa is because they dominated over same time period." - Anc13nt

I agree with that notion but I do not agree how that notion is used (not least in these boards are argued, nothing against your chain of argumentation particularly).

Bonjwa must dominate (doesn't imply 100% win rate, which is absurdity in frameworks of SC2) over his entire field of competition against considerably lengthy period of time (implying directly also that happens during his/hers career peak). However if it can be argued that Serral cannot be considered Bonjwa because he doesn't participate the league with all best players participating i.e. GSL, that same argument can be directly applied to GSL as a whole and all GSL players as well (they miss there Reynor, Neeb too, not only Serral).

That's symmetric. We must compare rates of extra GSL and extra Circuit dominance over the whole top SC2 scene.

How long? Against whom exactly? Must a future SC2 bonjwa dominate over whom and to what degree to be considered as such?

A random result between Maru and Serral in a random tournament cannot decide that properly in current world of SC2 environment. Maru winning Blizzcon alone wouldn't make him a bonjwa, exactly because we must use same arguments and apply them equally to all.

Lift the lock already!

In regards to 2019 you might have a point, that several foreigners are on par with the world class koreans. For 2018 look at GSL vs the world and Blizzcon, look at the results, the brackets and tell me that the top 10 players in the world had more than one foreigner (Serral).

Serral dominating the foreign scene in 2018 does not even register for a bonjwa discussion, it is his 2019 results that does that. Sadly the reason Serral is dominating "the world" argueably this year is because the level of play in korea has deteriorated. Look at the GSL vs world results in 2019 and compare it to 2018, it is evident foreigners are stronger compared to koreans than in previous years and therefore Serrals domination of the wcs circuit means more.

I don't claim that Serral is the one while recognizing that for the status there must be some minimum achievements on Korean soil accompanied due historical reasons. (back-to-back GSL vs The World can be just ignored, nil, doesn't count)

But it also seems to me that 'Bonjwa' -category is empty. Analogy would be the last two decades as its been like waiting of Jesus' next coming (while writing this already sandbacked, delayed, and move-goal-posted some 2000+ years by those who wait most eagerly, winks winks).

If in some utmostly unimaginable scenario SC2 will be played still after two millenia, all future Bonjwa canditates are likely shot down using Serral as excuse.

Whole word is just ideal state of potential in an imagination. When happening before our own eyes, we are still blinded by that ideal.

[Disclaimer: religious analogy is just for pointing out certain things about human history and psyche: next coming of J. was originally imminent - so has been the ideal of Bonjwa - always coming, never actualizing]

Someone should really break down the results of the 5 BW Bonjwas (BoxeR, NaDa, iloveoov, sAviOr, Flash) and figure out it was really fair not to award that title to anyone in SC2. MVP, Life, Maru, Serral and others have had very good results over a long time too.

I don't think there's anyone in SC2 who has had a bonjwa-esque run. In 2002 season, Nada won 3/3 MSL and 1/3 OSL (he won the OSL in 2003 but it started in 2002). That's 4 out of 6 of the most important tournaments. From November 2003 to November 2004, iloveoov won 3 MSLs in a row as well as an OSL (along with OSL semi). That's also 4 out of 6 of the Starleagues within that time period. Flash is the most impressive. He was in all 6 Starleague finals in 2010 and won 4 of them (he also won WCG). There's probably no SC2 player who had a run that was close to any of these three.

Boxer won 2 OSL, OSL final, and WCG in 2001 (there was only one MSL in 2001). So he won 2/4 Starleagues and was in 3/4 finals. Savior was in 4 MSL finals in a row (won 3 of them) and then made an OSL finals the season after his streak of MSL finals

Even Jaedong (who is not a bonjwa) in 2009 season won, 2 OSL, WCG and 1 MSL (won MSL in 2010 but season started in 2009). That's 3/6 Starleagues and a WCG. He also had around 70% winrate in 2009, which no SC2 player has accomplished (if you are talking about offline Korean winrate, which is the best comparison). Speaking of winrates, FlaSh, Jaedong and BIsu respectively had 71-72%, 67-68% and 65-66% career winrate. To my knowledge, only person in SC2 with a remotely comparable career winrate is Innovation who is around 62%. Evidently, great Brood War players were much more dominant than great SC2 players (I'm not sure why).

For comparison, I look at Maru and Serral's peaks (I think they are the highest and I don't know much about WoL so I excluded Mvp). In 2018, Maru won 4/9 of the premier tournaments (3 out of 5 among GSL, IEM WC, Blizzcon) he was in for 2018. Serral won 7/9. If you exclude WCS Circuit and HSC, he won 2/4 (1/2 among IEM WC and Blizzcon). It's hard to compare things to Brood War because they didn't have much else besides MSL and OSL, which were very prestigious. However, in SC2 there are many tournaments, some more prestigious than others.

The thing is, I think Serral and Maru both came close to Boxer and Savior's runs in 2018 but that very fact means neither can be bonjwa, as a bonjwa is supposed to have no rival near him. That is the main reason why Jaedong was not considered a bonjwa in 2009. To give an example, I think you'd have to do something ridiculous like win Blizzcon, 1-2 GSL, IEM WC to be equivalent to a Brood War bonjwa.

Note: I should've mentioned other smaller tournaments that the older bonjwas won but I decided not to because I think what I said was already enough and I know very little about the obscure tournaments.

Career winrate has nothing to with being Bonjwa(the earlier Bonjwas in Brood War had time to grow old and weaker so that their overall win ratio considerably declined); in any of case, just to name three, Byun had a 71% career winrate(only 59% offline) while Serral has 69% overall(67.5% offline) and Inno 67.5%(64%): comparable with those of the BW players you listed. Only one between Serral and Maru could theorically be bonjwa(as it was the case of Flash over Jaedong), but having two players that dominant doesn't imply that none of them could be.

To my understanding, being a Bonjwa isn't necessarily restricted to a one year run but simply to certain period of absolute domination which could be shorter or(very rarely) longer; Serral, Life, Maru, Rogue, Mvp, TaeJa all had periods of bonjwaesque domination over Sc2, of which Serral's is statistically the most dominant(if we look at his streak of his 6 Premier titles) or the most prolonged(20 months to win 10 Premier tournaments out of the 17 he participated in).

I only used career winrate to illustrate how SC2 players are generally less dominant than Brood War players. The Broodwar players I listed had years with like 70% winrate or higher (Flash had multiple years of mid 70% winrate while Jaedong had multiple years of 70% winrate). That their lifetime winrate is better than the greatest SC2 player's peak-year winrates I think shows Brood War players dominate harder than SC2 players.

The reason why Serral and Maru can't be bonjwa is because they dominated over same time period. Flash and Jaedong's peaks were almost a year apart (Jaedong in 2009, Flash in 2010) and thus had only a little overlap. Even though Serral has been playing amazingly for 20 months, I'd argue he was only undisputed best player for a couple of them whereas most bonjwas were clearly the best player throughout most of their peak..I'll admit that it's likely no other SC2 player has consistently stayed in the top for so long while winning many tournaments (Stats and Dark have been around as consistent but they don't win that many tournaments).

Ultimately, I don't think it's reasonable to impose Brood War's definition of bonjwa on SC2 because it's a lot harder to dominate in SC2. That doesn't make Serral and Maru worse than the BW greats, of course. They are obviously among the greatest SC2 players.

Instead of trying to call Serral a Bonjwa, why don't we just make "Serral" the SC2 equivalent of Bonjwa? I think that'll let the old fans leave their favorite term retired while making clear that Serral has done something completely unprecedented on the SC2 scene.

On September 09 2019 20:51 UnLarva wrote:"The reason why Serral and Maru can't be bonjwa is because they dominated over same time period." - Anc13nt

I agree with that notion but I do not agree how that notion is used (not least in these boards are argued, nothing against your chain of argumentation particularly).

Bonjwa must dominate (doesn't imply 100% win rate, which is absurdity in frameworks of SC2) over his entire field of competition against considerably lengthy period of time (implying directly also that happens during his/hers career peak). However if it can be argued that Serral cannot be considered Bonjwa because he doesn't participate the league with all best players participating i.e. GSL, that same argument can be directly applied to GSL as a whole and all GSL players as well (they miss there Reynor, Neeb too, not only Serral).

That's symmetric. We must compare rates of extra GSL and extra Circuit dominance over the whole top SC2 scene.

How long? Against whom exactly? Must a future SC2 bonjwa dominate over whom and to what degree to be considered as such?

A random result between Maru and Serral in a random tournament cannot decide that properly in current world of SC2 environment. Maru winning Blizzcon alone wouldn't make him a bonjwa, exactly because we must use same arguments and apply them equally to all.

Lift the lock already!

In regards to 2019 you might have a point, that several foreigners are on par with the world class koreans. For 2018 look at GSL vs the world and Blizzcon, look at the results, the brackets and tell me that the top 10 players in the world had more than one foreigner (Serral).

Serral dominating the foreign scene in 2018 does not even register for a bonjwa discussion, it is his 2019 results that does that. Sadly the reason Serral is dominating "the world" argueably this year is because the level of play in korea has deteriorated. Look at the GSL vs world results in 2019 and compare it to 2018, it is evident foreigners are stronger compared to koreans than in previous years and therefore Serrals domination of the wcs circuit means more.

Yeah. Hardest to quantify is exactly that immeasurable rate of which Serral's 2018 transcended the whole foreign scene, how his performance broke some mental blocks (particularly in Europe), and possibly forging some new (particularly in Korea). These kind of entanglements are hard to measure when they are happening and they usually become more transparent and easier to evaluate more time goes by.

"Little Serral was there in 2011..." - The host about Serral's win in WCS Fall at Montreal(More accurate, longer quote would be appreciated if someone even bother anymore)

On September 09 2019 21:17 Shuffleblade wrote:The problem with the Serral = Bonjwa discussion is that his domination mostly encompasses tournaments from which the rest of the best players in the world are barred. "But you can't blame Serral because koreans aren't allowed in most tournaments", no I am not blaming Serral but its not about apointing blame its about answering the question if Serral has unquestionably dominated the top level of professional starcraft 2 for a long period of time.

No one can do that while dodging most of the highest level of starcraft 2 tournaments, it just isn't possible, Serral not competing in GSL pretty much disqualifies him from the Bonjwa discussion.

On September 09 2019 18:45 Anc13nt wrote: Serral won 7/9. If you exclude WCS Circuit and HSC, he won 2/4 (1/2 among IEM WC and Blizzcon).

That is misleading, removing GSL and super tournaments just because he didn't participate in those tournaments only skew the discussion. A Bonjwa doesn't win the tournaments he competes in, he wins the biggest most competetive tournaments. I'm not saying Serrals wcs wins doesn't matter (which I've said before and changed my mind about) but when we are discussing being bonjwa or not we are entering a whole other discussion.

In 2018 Serral won 2/8 of the most prestigious tournaments and Maru won 3/8. The three remaning champions are Rogue, Stats and Classic.

I have said it before and I will say it again, looking forward to blizzcon and hoping for a protoss buff or zerg nerf coming.

I largely agree with your comment. The fact that Serral doesn't participate in GSL makes it much harder for him.whereas Maru not participating in WCS doesn't hurt him much. But in any case, the fact that top SC2 players don't participate in all the premiers in SC2 makes it pretty hard to compare tournament runs to BW, since it mainly goes against players like Serral..It's basically impossible to dominate the whole scene as a foreigner in the sense of winning enough of the hardest tournaments. Another reason why one shouldn't use bonjwa for SC2 players.

Edit: The other problem is that Maru probably will never be bonjwa either because there will always be the question of what would happen if Serral played in GSL.

The reason i think serral is at bonjwa status is that there are games i watch of his where i think, wow nobody in the world could do anything vs this. He makes other pro players look like complete novices. I don't care that he doesn't play GSL, but it's important to know he does also make those same koreans look awful just like the europeans. The recent GSL vs the world once again proved to me he can make koreans look like novices, hes just that next level up that i think nobody else is on. not even maru. When i think of that i then do think, bonjwa

Serral is not a bonjwa yet. I don't think his circuit premier titles are meaningless, but they aren't worth as much as his Blizzcon and GSL vs the world premier titles. Honestly, HSC is probably worth more than a WCS Circuit win even if liquipedia doesn't. Still Serral's only in his third year of full time play and seems to be ever improving, so I think he'll earn that title in due time.